Awesome Index

It was two days before Christmas 2006 when a 21 year old named Troy Brouwer played his first NHL game. He got four shifts that night for a total of less than three minutes. He didn’t play at all after the first period.

Four-hundred ninety-nine games later, Troy Brouwer has joined the 500 club. He did it in style with two goals. Longevity is laudable enough in this league, but Brouwer has scored 126 goals with 28 game-winners, won a Stanley Cup, danced Gangnam Style, and captured the imaginations of two seriously demented hockey fans.

I skipped the Awesome Index last week. There was nothing awesome going on. I tried to think of some, but then I had to wade through the internet’s putrid pools of pissypants to find any. Rather than do something insincere or making it the “awful index” for a week, I decided to take a week off. I’m glad I did. In the seven days since then, we’ve been inundated with Awesome.

The Caps are riding a three-game winning streak, all of it on the road, formerly ice cold players are denting the net, and one guy in particular is looking really good out there. And not just because he’s handsome. I’m talking about Brooks Laich, but before we get to him, we’ve got some other awesomeness to go over.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. The Caps lost in OT last night, but there are still a great many awesome things. There is no better time to take stock of all the awesome things in our weird little universe than today.

Let’s change the format today. Let’s throw the ranking out the window and do it like a grocery list. There’s too much awesome for a top five.

But then I remember overtime, and Eric Fehr seizing victory from the jaws of mediocrity, and I can’t help but think: Man, that was awesome.

Maybe being badly-needed is an essential property of Awesome. Maybe, when things suck, awesome things become even more precious. In this week’s awesome index, only the most indispensable awesome things shall be indexed. And you’re damn skippy I am starting with Fehr.

But a successful Capitals season depends on Alex Ovechkin spending almost 60 percent of his time on attack. Last night he spent just 30 percent of his time on attack. Top-line Beagle isn’t awesome in the long term, which is one of the principal lessons we should have learned from the last guy to stand behind the Caps bench, whose name I don’t want to mention in the Awesome Index, lest it be sullied.

But there’s plenty of other awesome stuff. The Caps have won three in a row, which is absolutely awesome. And while the ways in which they’ve won those games haven’t been particularly awesome, what with the noted lack of SCOAR MOAR GOALS once they get a lead, maybe I’m just thinking about it wrong.

You’re like, “No way. No way Peter can find awesome things right now. The Caps have lost like seventy games straight. Except for stupid fancystats, he can’t name anything awesome about this team at all.”

Challenge accepted, holmes. The Capitals are awesome. I think I’ve found one spot where they can increase awesomeness in particular. Plus: did you even see the top line last night? They were awesome!

“But, Peter,” you might say, “what could be awesome about the Caps losing two out of three games on that road trip?”

A good question, hypothetical reader into whose mouth I have put words. While the Caps played awesome in western Canada, the results were not uniformly awesome. We’re gonna have to dig deep this week to find the coolest stuff in the Caps’ world.

You’re back already for some more Awesome Index? Good, because I’ve got heaping helping of hella awesome stuff all plated up for you.

Not a lot of Caps hockey since the last time I left you a dope beat to step to, but that doesn’t mean the world of the Capitals was quiet. Indeed, there was all kinds of stuff happening this week, and some if it was– and I hope you’re sitting down for this– awesome.